Trump Is Right about the NFL Protests

I’m a big fan of David French’s work, so I was disappointed to read his column “I Understand Why They Knelt.” Respectfully (and I mean that), I believe it is off-base on almost every point that matters.

For example, French treats Trump’s suggestion that NFL players be fired as a First Amendment issue and an abridgement of their free speech. This is just not so. NFL players do have a right of free speech, but they don’t have a right to avoid criticism for engaging in that speech. Despite the fact that Trump said NFL players should be fired, he didn’t call for Congress to take action. He didn’t try to push through an executive order saying that protesting the flag should be illegal. He hasn’t promised that the government will go after the NFL. He used his free speech to criticize their free speech. I’m not sure how that violates the First Amendment or curtails the rights of the NFL players disrespecting our flag, who are still employed.

French then goes on to complain that Trump “did more to politicize sports than ESPN has done in a decade of biased, progressive programming.” Except that’s exactly backwards. ESPN and the NFL have been slamming politics down our throats for over a year. I know that because I wrote a column calling for conservatives to boycott the NFL a year ago. Many other conservatives have done the same thing, and millions of fans have complained. But when someone with a platform big enough to cut through the noise echoes the complaint so many conservatives have, he’s supposed to be at fault?

Then there’s the real complaint, an argument that in a roundabout way cuts to the heart of what I believe is wrong with French’s approach to the issue. French says: “The hypocrisy runs the other way, too. I was startled to see many conservatives who decried Google’s termination of a young, dissenting software engineer work overtime yesterday to argue that Trump was somehow in the right.”

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